The Beast of the Vosges (La Bête des Vosges), 1977

The Vosges département, north-eastern France. 6 February 1977. Lucien Baret, a federal game warden, saw "an enormous beast" chasing a roe deer in the woods near Rambervillers. It hunted in the open without making the least noise. Ten days later, a farm worker on the road from Moyemont to Rambervillers described a kind of big dog, or rather a wolf. Lighter on the chest and under the belly. A very bushy tail, ending in a tuft of black hair.

The night of 27 to 28 March 1977. Seven sheep were killed in an enclosure at Domèvre-sur-Durbion. Days later, the animal struck at Moriville and Hadigny-les-Verrières. On 16 April a young bull was strangled. That day the prefect's report to the Interior Minister spoke of "an unidentified animal, which could be a dog gone wild." More than sixty sheep and ewes had had their throats cut.

19 April 1977. A hunt at Domèvre-sur-Durbion. Finally flushed out, the animal broke cover right in the hunters' line of fire. Ernest Gless of La Liberté de l'Est, one of the photographers present, took the shot. The hunters lost their nerve and fired from too far away. Seventeen shots. All missed. The beast slipped through the only gap in the cordon. One of the hunters had left their post to chat with a colleague.

Gless's picture is blurred and distant. It shows a large canid, dog or wolf. It remains the only usable photograph of the Beast.

By 12 May, 120 sheep were dead. The attacks moved to the Vologne valley, and from 22 May La Bresse became the main hunting ground. The army, the gendarmerie and federal wardens joined hundreds of local hunters. On 5 November, more than 400 people hunted in the Noire Goutte forest. On 13 November, during a storm, the region's largest flock was attacked near the Col de Grosse Pierre. Thirty-seven victims.

15 November. Two almost simultaneous attacks, about ten kilometres apart, at Gerbamont and Rochesson. Then the killing stopped. The last tracks were seen on 3 February 1978 at Lispach, La Bresse. The final tally: 289 sheep, two heifers, one bull calf and one foal. Twenty-six hunts. 1,835 people.

The prefecture first suspected a feral dog. A witness named Bourgaud, interviewed on FR3, concluded it was a wolf. Daniel Jumentier studied the photographs and called it "probably a wolf dog cross, first or second generation." Others proposed a dingo, a lynx or an escaped zoo animal. The two attacks of 15 November raised the idea of two animals.

Rumour also fixed on the Château d'Hadigny-les-Verrières, owned by the German industrialist Manfred "Peter" Reinartz. People whispered of a lost wolf, or of trained war dogs. L'Humanité ran the headline "Vosges: a zone closed to the French." Communist deputy Alain Bocquet asked the Prime Minister for an inquiry. None of the rumours about Reinartz was ever substantiated.

Commentators called it a modern Gévaudan, after the Bête du Gévaudan of 1764 to 1767. The animal itself was never identified. Gaston Picard's book followed in 1989, and Robin Hunzinger's documentary La Bête des Vosges : autopsie d'une rumeur asked why and how a banal news story became an incredible modern tale. Wolves did come back. A female attacked flocks in 1994 and 1995, and a 2011 attack at Ventron was treated as the wolf's official return.